Frontier Airlines Airbus A321 211 accident
Airbus A321 211 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From PMW · Portland, ME to Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA19LA193
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Airbus A321 211
- Aircraft type
- Airbus A321
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N717FR
- Operator
- Frontier Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PMW · Portland, METo Orlando International Airport (MCO), Orlando, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2017)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 121: Air Carrier
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Tailstrike
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The final approach was considered stabilized. At about 40 feet above ground level, a significant tailwind gust of about 25 knots was experienced, creating a loss of airspeed. The loss of airspeed resulted in a loss of lift at a low height and led to a hard touchdown. At about 10 feet above the runway (and before the hard touchdown) the flight crew set “TOGA” thrust for go-around and applied full back stick pressure resulting in a pitch increase to +9.2 degrees. The engines required time to spool up and the airplane lost altitude before it started to climb. The increase in pitch and delay in thrust caused the tailstrike, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The airplane was fitted with a tailstrike prevention option which appears on the primary flight director (PFD) when below 400 feet but deactivates when thrust levers are pushed to “TOGA”. Standard operating procedures for go-arounds near the ground inform flight crews to avoid an excessive rotation rate to prevent tailstrikes.
Probable cause
Encountering gusty conditions at a low altitude during landing and the crew’s decision to do a go-around at a low altitude with an excessive rotation rate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA19LA193
- Event ID
- 20190808X62316
- Case number
- DCA19LA193
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6e96fb1ea2438f29902aadd762f308215a1e923bf77ada05463de372719b8f49; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:41:15.105Z.